Science education reforms focus on the integration of three dimensions: disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), scientific and engineering practices (SEPs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). While research has examined the role of DCIs and SEPs in teaching and learning, little research has explored how the CCCs might be integrated. This research proposes an approach for integrating the CCCs into instruction to support students to understand the utility of the CCCs before applying them to make connections across science ideas.Using lessons co-developed with the teacher who enacted them, this design experiment describes a teacher's use of the three dimensions to support student learning. The findings use students' conceptual models and classroom dialogue as evidence to illustrate the roles that the CCC played in opportunities to learn. The CCCs appear to play three roles: (1) they implicitly served as a frame for the classroom activities and dialogue, (2) they explicitly framed a discussion to develop students' understanding about their use as a lens to examine the phenomenon, and (3) the components of the CCC appeared in students' conceptual models highlighting aspects of their understanding. This research has implications for how learning environments can be developed to support students' learning of threedimensional science knowledge.

Scaffolding is a complicated construct that can take many forms, including both written and verbal forms. This research study focused on three elementary science classrooms where students were using a series of written scaffolds to guide explanation building. In each classroom, data were collected to document and study an additional type of scaffold, verbal scaffolds that the teachers provided to complement the written scaffolds. Findings suggested that some types of verbal scaffolds, such as navigational guidance, were universal and therefore cut across all three grade levels. On balance, other verbal scaffolds were more common with younger students in association with their first explanation‐building science unit, such as a verbal scaffold that turned an open‐ended question into a few multiple‐choice options. Through the characterization of the types and range of verbal scaffolds that teachers say, both in general and in response to audience, we can gain insights to inform both curricular design and professional development toward supported explanation building across target audience, time, and topic.

Contemporary science education frameworks identify computational thinking as an essential science and engineering practice that supports scientific sense-making and engineering design. Despite national emphasis on teaching science, engineering, and computational thinking (NGSS Lead States, 2013), little research has investigated the ways that elementary teachers support students to engage in science and engineering practices (SEPs) within integrated science, engineering, and computational thinking curricula. This study explores how teachers provide verbal support of SEPs to upper elementary students during a 4-week NGSS-aligned curricular unit that challenged students to redesign their school to reduce water runoff. Students conducted hands-on investigations of water runoff and created computational models to test their designs. Teacher audio data during the classroom implementation was collected and qualitatively coded for different purposes of verbal support, such as to understand how (pragmatic), when, and why (epistemic) to use SEPs, in three focal lessons. Results show that teachers provided a range of pragmatic and

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